Josh Hamilton of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim smiles during the press conference introducing Hamilton as the team's newest player as Angels General Manager Jerry Dipoto (R) and wife Katie look on at ESPN Zone at Downtown Disney on December 15, 2012 in Anaheim, California.

Rangers GM Jon Daniels joined the Ben & Skin show on KESN-FM this week to discuss Josh Hamilton's departure and the Rangers' off-season. Here are some highlights:

On if he was surprised when he heard Josh Hamilton had signed with
the Angels:

Yeah, there
was definitely an element of surprise there. Literally from a timing
standpoint, it couldn’t have been more awkward. We had our holiday media
luncheon with the local writers and some broadcast guys there, so literally I
had just given the state-of-the-union update, which included me saying there was
nothing new on Josh, sat down to have lunch and get a phone call from his
agent. So I stepped away and then got that news.

On how far talks with Hamilton
progressed:

We had
presented something to them at the winter meetings. Not necessarily a final
offer, but just conceptually, it was different than they were looking for. There
was a chance for him to earn considerably more than there was guaranteed there,
but at the end of the day, I think the offer he got from Anaheim was certainly better, certainly more
guaranteed money, than we put out there.

On his emotions when delivering the news of Hamilton’s departure:

Some of the stuff from [from the news conference], literally I heard
about the news and I addressed the media like 10 minutes later because we were
sitting there with them. And it was somewhat raw. My sentiment was accurate,
but one thing I wanted to address that I think got lost in that is sometimes
you see an organization – and we’ve probably been guilty of it over the years
and I know others have too – when a guy leaves, there’s kind of a smear
campaign on the way out the door. That’s not the case here at all. I was
disappointed in how it was handled at the end just from the nature of the
relationship and the communication, but I don’t begrudge him at all for taking
that kind of an offer and going. The bottom line is Josh was a huge part of our
club for the last five years. He was tremendous for our fan base, tremendous
for our team, and he was at the center of things for probably the best run this
organization has had to date. So that’s how I’m going to look at it. The bottom
line is now we’re going to try to get him out, so I hope he loses a lot of games.
But I don’t want to say anything but good for him and his family, personally.

On the contract the Rangers offered Hamilton:

I’m not going
to say what we offered. Nobody’s speculated or reported accurately on what we
had offered. It was kind of a unique concept, but the idea that we wouldn’t go
more than three years or that we wouldn’t do any of those things, those were
all reports that weren’t necessarily based on the truth.

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